


7+1 times lance hunter falls in love

by lazyfish



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: 5+1 Things, F/M, M/M, Multi, except it's 7+1 things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-05
Updated: 2020-01-05
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:55:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22132915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lazyfish/pseuds/lazyfish
Summary: The thing about falling in love is that it always teaches you a lesson - and Lance Hunter has a lot of lessons left to learn.
Relationships: Lance Hunter/Alphonso Mackenzie, Lance Hunter/Bobbi Morse, Lance Hunter/Jemma Simmons, Lance Hunter/Leo Fitz, Lance Hunter/Melinda May, Lance Hunter/Skye | Daisy Johnson/Antoine Triplett
Comments: 18
Kudos: 26
Collections: Marvel Polyship Bingo 2020





	7+1 times lance hunter falls in love

i.

He’s on a pier, hot summer night sticking to his skin. Ocean waves crash against the sand below, and he has the vague awareness that this seems like a scene out of a movie. When she steps into his line of sight, Hunter _definitely_ feels like he’s in a movie, because no person that beautiful exists in the real world.

Except Bobbi Morse does exist, and she crowds into his personal space and smells like expensive perfumes and plays with his fingers instead of holding his hands.

They sleep together, but he’s a little gone for her even before they get to the bedroom. When he wakes up he’s disappointed she’s gone because a little part of him had already imagined what it would be like to wake up next to her.

And then he _does_ get to wake up next to her, and it’s even better than he imagined. It’s better than the movies, too, because it is all _real_. She still plays with his hands, runs her thumb against the calluses on his palms, but she doesn’t smell like perfume anymore. She smells like his cologne and a shampoo he still can’t find in the shower and the laundry detergent they’ve argued about a half a dozen times. She kisses him in the shadows but she kisses him in the light, too. She forgets his birthday once and their anniversary a different time, but she remembers how much he likes her hands in his hair, remembers his favorite song, remembers what it feels like to fall in love with him.

Bobbi Morse is his first love, but she knows from the start she won’t be his last. She’s fine with it - more than fine with it, actually. She knows his heart is not a treasure to be locked away, and that only makes him love her more.

\---

ii.

Mack is different. Hunter doesn’t think anyone would ever call the other man delicate, but that is what he is - how they feel. Mack knows about Bobbi, knows Hunter loves Bobbi - he has to, because Bobbi’s the one who introduced them, who smiles at Mack and calls Hunter _my husband, Lance_ , and then proceeds to wink at Mack and find every excuse to leave them alone together.

Mack’s still recovering from a broken heart, and that’s what makes it delicate. Hunter doesn’t want to push too hard, doesn’t want to ask Mack for anything he can’t give, but he also can’t deny the safety he feels when he stands at the other man’s side.

In Dubai there’s pounding music and flashing lights and so much stimulation even the most level-headed people would feel overwhelmed, but Hunter _doesn’t_. He doesn’t because Mack’s there, and Mack anchors him the way no one else can. When they’re walking back to the hotel, comms turned off for the night, Hunter tells him so, and Mack smiles.

 _Nice to know I hold you down_ , he says, chuckling in his self-deprecating way.

 _It’s not supposed to be a bad thing!_ Hunter insists.

 _Oh, I know._ Then Mack bends down and scoops him close and kisses him, and Hunter’s indignation is lost in the feeling of warm lips on his.

Mack is his second love - fragile but strong, delicate but unyielding. Hunter does not think of himself as _belonging_ with certain people, because love is a choice, but if people belong together, he belongs with Mack. He belongs with someone who will hold him down, who will keep him from spiralling out of control, who will hug him tight and close and unashamed.

He loves Bobbi. He loves Mack. Hunter think they might love each other too, but both of them are too concerned with crossing a line to say anything. They’ll figure it out in time, Hunter knows.

Love is stubborn like that.

\---

iii. + iv.

Trip is a surprise. Not that Hunter falls in love with him - he’s wont to do that lately, especially for people whose hearts are bigger than he deserves - but that Trip seems to love him back. Because there’s the… problem? Obstacle? Footnote? Of Skye, who he’s been quietly pursuing for months now. Hunter doesn’t want to get in the way of whatever that is, and buries his feelings up close to his chest. He spends the time he can with Mack, and the rest of his free time he floats.

He floats, and Trip finds him. Hunter isn’t used to being sought out - he’s used to being second-best. Not always to other people, but to other things. He’s been second to S.H.I.E.L.D. for a long time, had resigned himself to being second to Skye if Trip gives him the time of day at all, but… that’s not what happens. Trip finds him, sits with his shoulder pressed against Hunter’s, laughs and calls him _man_ and when Trip and Skye finally figure their shit out, Trip brings Skye, too. And they’re a surprise, both apart and together, because they’re _easy_.

When Bobbi comes back, they let him go to her. When she and Mack betray him, Trip and Skye are the ones to piece him back together, bit by painstaking bit.

(He doesn’t realize there’s a universe where he has to piece everything back together himself. In that universe, he leaves a few pieces behind. In this one, he never feels anything less than whole. In this universe, when he runs after his first love, he has people to come running back to. In this universe, Mack waits with him by the bedside, and so do Skye and Trip.)

Skye becomes Daisy. Hunter stays Hunter, and Trip stays Trip, and the three of them stay in love, together.

Daisy can move mountains. Trip can move hearts.

Hunter? All he can move is himself, but that seems to be enough for them.

\---

v.

Jemma is not the only one who has nightmares of being lost in the sand. Hunter knows it’s different, knows an alien planet is different from the deserts of the Middle East, but nightmares are nightmares. No one quite knows how to hold Jemma’s heart, not even Jemma herself, so Hunter takes it. Hunter takes it and holds it close to his chest because he knows better than anyone what it feels like to drown under the weight of sand and loneliness and terror. He holds it tight and by the time they all feel safe enough for him to give it back, he’s in love with Jemma Simmons.

He doesn’t call it that, not to her face. She has too many people trying to love her and not enough people trying to listen to her, and it’s awful that the two aren’t the same. So Hunter tries to listen, when he sits on the foot of her bunk in the middle of the night and listens to her tremulously tell the story of what it’s like to leave someone behind when you know they won’t survive without you. He ignores his own crashing memories of blood like rust on the sand, ignores the phantom gunshots and not-so-phantom pain.

He holds her body close, because he’s held her heart and knows all too well how fragile it is. And sometimes, he realizes, that’s all love has to be - holding someone when they need to be held.

They still never call it love, but when Jemma is scared, he is the one she runs to. When she is sad, he is the shoulder she cries on. He sees her in her highs and her lows and the moments she’s so angry she can’t do anything but scream. He sees her through it all, and it occurs to Hunter, one morning in the kitchen, that this is what it’s like to be someone’s port in the storm. He’s had so many people do that for him, and for once, he gets to be the safe one.

Jemma kisses him for the first time when they’re knee-deep in the Atlantic Ocean, after he catches her from falling into a wave. She isn’t afraid.

He isn’t either.

\---

vi.

He is not the man Melinda May wants to grow old with. He’s not the one she wants to have children with, or build a life with. That is for Phil and Andrew - the three of them stronger together than they are apart, just like Hunter is better when he is surrounded by the ones he loves. Things are already getting complicated, a tangled web of feelings rising up with him in the epicenter, but Lance Hunter doesn’t know how not to fall in love, even with the women who seem to hate him.

He sits in a meeting with everyone else he loves - it’s a crowded meeting - and they talk him into and out of a relationship with May at least five times over. Everyone has thoughts, everyone has feelings, and for the first time, who Hunter sleeps with seems deeply personal to all involved. He feels like he crossed a line somewhere and doesn’t know what to do with it.

May walks into the room. Asks what they’re talking about.

Mack tells the truth.

May walks over, kisses Hunter straight on the lips, then walks out.

And that’s how most of his relationship with her goes - walking a tightrope of duty and desire. Hunter smooths an awful lot of ruffled feathers. Apparently, so do Phil and Andrew, so Hunter begins to think Melinda only got the reputation of resident badass because she can charm just about any man into dealing with the bureaucratic nonsense for her.

May is not nearly as constant as some of his other relationships are; she comes and goes when she pleases, and Hunter accepts it. He has people who are steady for him and people who he is steady for, and a cool breeze is welcome every once in a while.

He’s learned a lot about love these past few years, but May teaches him love does not have to be permanent to be worthwhile.

\---

vii.

Fitz is the last. Not because Hunter has run out of room in his heart or his bed, but because he chooses Fitz to be his last. He had been sucked into his first love, but he chooses his last love. It would’ve happened earlier, probably, if Fitz had been ready, but he wasn’t. He wasn’t ready to be loved, and Hunter’s much better at loving people who are at least a little ready to accept his feelings.

They come out of that goddamn simulation, and Hunter sits at Fitz’s side.

 _So_ , he says.

 _So what?_ Fitz asks.

Hunter doesn’t have to say anything more. AIDA had taken love out of Fitz’s life - stripped him of his mother who sang him lullabies, of his friends who cared for him. She made herself the only person Fitz could run to, and oh, Hunter knows how dangerous it is to pin your hopes on just one person. Even if that person isn’t an evil robot hell-bent on corrupting you, it’s bad to be alone. Two is stronger than one, three is stronger than two, on and on.

Seven is the strongest number, Hunter thinks. Seven is lucky, seven is perfect, seven is whole. He’s fallen in love six times already, and he chooses his seventh the moment he takes Fitz’s hand.

Hunter has been safety before, but there’s more to it this time. Fitz wants to make room for more people, but doesn’t know how. Hunter is a safe place to run to, but he’s also a safe place to grow, to learn.

He’s certain Fitz has something to teach him, too.

\---

+i.

He’s built a life, Hunter realizes one day. There had been a time when he was afraid of that - of finding love so permanent he built his life around it. But he _has_ built a life, has grown roots deeper than his past self had ever dared to hope for.

He didn’t do it alone, Hunter knows. But he also couldn’t have done it without the heart that hasn’t failed him yet, and another revelation is quick to cross his mind.

 _He_ is the center of it all, and Lance Hunter? He deserves to be loved, most of all by himself.

Hunter does not love seven people -

He loves eight.


End file.
